Actually I don't care at all about the first and the third messages. I am constantly wasting my time here or somewhere else, and I am inmune to advertisement. What really worries me is the second one:
You are one year nearer to death
There are children in this site, aren't there? Isn't this like... too dark for them?
There are also old guys here. Many. They complain a lot. How is it possible that they haven't realized what chess.com is doing here? Would you really go and tell that to a 70-year old man? Isn't this extremely impolite and disrespectful? Or am I drawing ridiculous conclusions as usual?
Some days ago, I received this unexpected, yet irritating trophy:
To some of you, it might seem an innocent message to celebrate that the Earth and the Sun were more or less in the same positions as when I created this account.
But you couldn't be more wrong.
This trophy actually carries several messages, which only an expert like me can decipher:
-You have wasted an important part of a year of your life in a chess website.
-You are one year nearer to death.
-It encourages you to buy a membership. Here's why:
Congrats on being a long-time member! Thanks for spending a whole year on Chess.com - we appreciate your support!
The trophy comes with this text, which mentions my support. What does that mean?
If I had a paid membership, it's obvious-they would want me to keep paying.
But that's not the case. To free members, the message is trying to make you feel bad for not paying. They are thanking you for doing nothing, the most common reaction would be "oh, they really shouldn't be doing this. Let's try a gold membership, they've been so kind". It's subliminal advertisement what we have here.